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With Open Site Explorer, I checked webstatsdomain.com where the goofy links originate. Its Domain Authority is 67/100 and Page Authority is 72/100. From your answer, it sounds like it is worthwhile to redirect it to the closest page. Thanks!

I agree with Garrett in that I would use the H1 tag to mark up a heading (e.g., an article title, not a link or image.) H1, H2, H3 tags (and so forth) are (textual) header tags, after all, by definition, and are meant to help crawlers understand how pages are organized. They are also very important in helping screen readers (often used by the visually impaired) understand how a page is organized. Not properly marking up pages can result in a very frustrating, and confusing experience for those who rely on screen readers to navigate the web. The WC3 explains how to mark up textual content in HTML very well. While including the keyword in the H1 tag has little, if any value in terms of SEO, I think including it is good for usability -- for all users, not just those that use screen readers. When a user performs a keyword search, the search results show the keyword in the page titles. I think it confirms (for the user) that they are on the correct page (and have found what they are looking for) when one of the first things they see after clicking through to a page (from a search result) is a prominent headline containing the keyword in it.

It's unlikely to be harmful since you're not doing anything malicious or misleading.

Thank you for this, we wanted to try and show what towns the service was available in and we have tried different ways to show this and this is the only way we have found that works, but i am open to ideas

Hey Matti Glad it helped buddy. Check out those tools, they won't do the job for you but they will certainly help out with some of the manual labour aspects. Marcus

With that kind of complexity, there's rarely just one answer, and I'd hesitate to use rel=canonical for every problem. For search pagination, for example, rel=prev/next is probably a better choice. I've got a huge post on the topic here that shows just how complex it is: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/duplicate-content-in-a-post-panda-world A combination of META NOINDEX and rel=canonical can be a big help for the rest, but it depends a lot on the situation. Do you have a sense of what the worst culprits are? If you can start with the ones causing 50K+ indexed pages each, you don't have to necessarily solve everything at once. Don't implement multiple solutions for any given problem - it can do more harm than good. Also, be aware that deindexation takes a while - sometimes a long while. I know that's frustrating, but just because 500K pages don't drop out of the index tomorrow doesn't mean what you did isn't working. It can take 1-2 weeks just to see them start to fall. Don't make a change and then reverse it in 48 hours, or you can cause even more long-term damage (believe me, I've seen it).

Hi BruLee, I'd recommend setting up directories for each language and using the rel="alternate" hreflang="x" tag For more info how to use it: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=189077 Good luck! Chris

It's kinda strange. I would expect all URLs blocked by robots.txt to NOT show up anywhere on Seomoz.

Hi FinalFrontier, I agree with setting up a 301 redirect to a single version. I also recommend doing the following: Set up canonical URLs to your desired version Ensure that your XML sitemaps use your desired version Add both www and non-www to Google Webmaster Tools and select one as the URL you'd like displayed in search results Best of luck! Chris

It's probably not worth it to contact EVERY site, but it could be worth it to reach out to the highest value links, especially if you see a rankings drop after the move.  Export your backlinks and sort them by PA/DA, then contact the ones at the top of the list.

Thanks Keri, I'll give this a try and see what I find.

The pages should not show up at all once they are de-indexed.

It is really likely that the penalty was because of anchor text over optimization. check you backlink profile for that keyword. do you have many domains pointing at you with that keyword? Remember that with penguin it the link profile have to look natural. For homepage most links should be the brandname, variations of the url, and links like here you can XYZ ... etc Only a few with keywords. Check your anchor text profile in OSE. Good luck!

Hi Irving, Yes GEO Targeting is already set up in Webmaster tools. Is that enough to put the same content on on both websites?

the subdomain is considered a new site. Their main site will only get SEO credit if the subdomain links (like somewhere like in the footer) to the main site

I understand. Thank you very much for your help and answers. I really appreciate that. Lenia